Photographing watercolours; hand prints in stone age caves by women; Slow cooker temperatures; baking bread and cinnamon rolls; Immigration ban saga continues.
This morning helped Jane take photographs of two recent watercolour paintings. We were using natural light from the windows, which presented two problems. The first was the remarkably low light on a gray day. My camera was registering exposures of 1/8th second for f8, 400 ISO. A tripod was essential to get a sharp picture. With a larger picture, the sun-lounge gave a more even lighting from the large windows; we found photos in the lounge had an almost imperceptible light gradient across the photo as the window was much smaller.
The second issue was correct colour reproduction. It is essential to set your camera's white balance for the time and location of your photography. For a compact camera, you have to rely on the presets (sunshine, cloudy day, incandescent or fluorescent lighting. With an SLR, you can either set the white balance using a sheet of white paper. I now use a lens cap with a white opaque filter. you place the camera where your subject is going to be, facing the light , with the special lens cap on, and take a reference picture.
Listening to 'The Museum of Curiosity' on BBC 4 in the shower, came away with a book to buy and a stone age fact from anthropologist Kate Fox. Even before getting dressed, I had ordered 'Watching the English' for my Kindle before I forgot the title. The stone age fact was that about three quarters of the hand-prints accompanying cave paintings were made by women, in the 8 caves studied by Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University. The gender identification is given by the index and the ring fingers being equal in length. In males, the ring finger is generally markedly longer than the index finger.
Having had a busy Friday and Saturday, I was glad to have a simpler lunch to cook. I'd thawed out the last batch of sausages in Polish sauce from New Year's Eve and sauerkraut with apple and onion, and heated them in the slow cooker for 3h. I then only needed to cook some potatoes and a bit of carrot - Delicious! Playing with my (Heston Blumenthal!) food thermometer, I measured the slow cooker temperature as 70 degC. Checking online, I found a useful temperature reference from, yes, Heston Blumenthal, in The Guardian, Saturday 24th November 2001:
"The important temperatures in the process of meat cookery are as follows: at 40C, proteins in meat start to denature. At 50C, collagen begins to contract. At 55C, collagen starts softening. Between 70C and 75C, the meat no longer holds oxygen and turns grey. At 100C, water in meat begins to evaporate. If meat is cooked at 100C, the pressure caused by the evaporation obliterates the meat, and any juices left in it disappear."
Camilla the sourdough was due for a feeding after 5 days in the fridge, so I also set up a new loaf. This time, I added the sourdough starter to strong white flour, rather than the 50:50 wholemeal to white flour ratio. Added seeds as usual. I also did not add any additional yeast and relied on the natural yeast and bacteria from the sourdough. The first rise was much slower, as expected, taking about 4 hours. It took about 5 further hours to rise in the tin and is only now out of the oven
Finally got round to baking the cinnamon swirls that had been waiting in one of those pastry in a cardboard rolls you can get from the supermarket. The first two were a tasty accompaniment to afternoon tea after we had been out for a walk around the Milton Country Park.
By this morning, the US Justice Department had appealed against Judge James Robart's ruling against President Trump's immigration ban. By the early afternoon, the U.S. federal appeals court declined to immediately reinstate Trump's ban. The matter will be considered in more detail later in the coming week.
After attempting to delegitimise/diminish Judge Robart by using the phrase "a so-called judge" yesterday, Trump again weighs in. This time he tries to shift the blame for the failure of the ban and any future consequences to Robart, in his tweet,
"Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!"
This week's New Scientist continues with the deep concern about science being gagged by the new US administration. The travel ban raises uncertainty for scientist wishing to visit the US, or those with links to the 8 banned countries by birth or nationality, leaving and returning to US. The clamping down on government scientists (ban on communication with media, political vetting of research publications/statements) could also seriously impact on research.
Apparently Canadian science suffered from a similar attitude from 2006 to 2015, where over 2000 fisheries and environmental scientists lost their jobs, arctic research and climate change were under pressure and scientists felt they were leaned on to give the politically correct statements.
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